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A done deal – Trammell Crow buys big North Central Expressway property for major development

The former Affiliated Computer Services campus on North Central Expressway is next door to the Cityplace tower.

Developer Trammell Crow Co. has purchased a prime development site just north of downtown Dallas that will be used for a major mixed-use development.

Crow Co. on Friday acquired almost 17 acres of the former Affiliated Computer Services campus on North Central Expressway just north of Haskell Avenue. The property was purchased from Xerox Corp. in a deal that’s taken more than a year to complete.

Now Crow will demolish two office buildings on the property to make way for construction of an urban style retail and mixed-use development. The property is zoned for a variety of uses including shops, restaurants, hotels and apartments.

Veteran Dallas real estate brokers Wayne Swearingen and King Laughlin represented Crow in the prime property acquisition from Xerox after months of bargaining.

“About June of last year we were having breakfast with (Crow senior managing director) Denton Walker and he had completed the sale of his Timber Creek Crossing development on Northwest Highway,” Swearingen said Friday. “He was looking for another big piece of land as close in to downtown Dallas as possible.

“King Laughlin and I had been tracking this Xerox site for a long time,” Swearingen said. “I knew David Jarrett at Xerox (senior vice president of real estate) and called him and we started a dialogue.”

Terms of the deal between Crow and Xerox were not disclosed.
The property is valued for taxes at about $11 million.

Xerox is keeping the south end of the campus at North Central and Haskell.
“They have a data center which will still be operating for some time,” Swearingen said.

Swearingen’s co broker on the deal, King Laughlin, couldn’t be more familiar with the property and the surrounding neighborhood.

During the 1980s Laughlin secretly represented 7-Eleven former owner Southland Corp. in buying up more than 150 surrounding acres that became the Cityplace redevelopment project.

“There were 1,000 individual transactions and the total value was more than $350 million,” Laughlin said. “The original plan was done at a time when office buildings were the range.

“But times changed and the majority of the deal turned out to be residential,” he said. “Hanover Co. is building a huge apartment project right next door to the property we just sold.”

The development site Crow bought is now surrounded by urban apartment and retail projects. It’s just northeast of the popular West Village shopping and restaurant complex.

Crow is best known in the Dallas area for its big office developments, including the company’s 13-story Legacy Tower under construction in West Plano.

But the Timber Creek Crossing shopping center the developer built at Northwest Highway and Skillman Avenue is one of the most successful retail projects ever done in the Dallas area.

Crow developed the 485,00 sare-foot center anchored by J.C. Penney, Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in 2010. And in late 2011 Crow sold the 44-acre retail complex to a partnership headed by Canadian investor RioCan for $82 million.

While the Xerox property Crow just bought isn’t as large as the Timber Creek property, it has higher density zoning which can allow a large amount of building construction.

Swearingen said to make way for the project, a 15-story office tower and a smaller commercial building on the property will be demolished.

With the Cityplace development largely completed, there are relatively few construction sites for new projects along the south end of North Central.

Crow has been working for several months to plan the Xerox property and gain city approvals before it completed its purchase.

The Affiliated Computer campus was previously the headquarters of 7-Eleven owner Southland before it built the 42-story Cityplace towerand moved across the street.

Wayne Swearingen

Crow purchased the north 17 acres of the Affiliated Computer Services campus from Xerox.

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